


Hero

by inkandpaperhowl



Series: Survivors' Guild [6]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen, Westfall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 11:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandpaperhowl/pseuds/inkandpaperhowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He shook off a year of immobility, a year of silence, a year of stagnant mind and spirit and body. He watched the setting sun dry the tears on her face and something inside him woke up and remembered. He still had people to save.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing but Endimyon. Blizzard, on the other hand, has a share in the custody of my soul...

**Hero**

_Endimyon_

.

He had been a hero once, that much he remembered. He had fought his way across the faces of several worlds. He had protected many helpless, slain many foes. He had been to war. That much he knew. What else but war could have left him in this broken shell?

His own strength surprised him sometimes. He lifted with ease the hammer his hand had once thought heavy. He was rarely hungry, and needed little more than bread and water to keep up his strength. He never tired. Sometimes he longed to sleep, just to pass a few hours in oblivion, just so that he would not have to mark the passage of time. But his blue, glowing eyes refused to close, his mind refused to let him pass into the darkness and vulnerability of sleep. He had no heartbeat, and in the quiet moments, the silence deafened him. He was uncomfortable in his own cold skin. 

He had died. That much he knew. But his body refused to be dead. 

He did not notice much when he sat down and waited for his body to catch up with his spirit and waste away. He chose a remote cliff in a yellowing land he thought he had been to before. The long, golden grass gave way to neat, furrowed fields unfolding in perfect squares below him. His eyes could see the busy farmers working away. He would have helped them before, would have driven the coyotes from their fields, killed the birds harrying the hay, killed the kobolds that had invaded their mines. He would have fed the homeless gathered under the stone walls of the fortress. When he had been alive, when he had been a hero, he might have done these good deeds. But he was dead now, and he could help them no longer. 

He sat uncomfortably, his legs tucked under him, his naked sword spread across his knees. He watched the yellowing land yellow further and the green leaves of the scattered trees turn brown and drop from the branches. He watched the farmers drag their harvests in and knew that--before--he would have helped them. He watched as everything yellow in the land turned brown and was buried in snow. He ignored the fact that he was buried in snow, as well. His already cold body did not mind the winter. 

Eventually, the snows melted, but still he sat, unmovable and unmoved. The sun beat down on his deep blue skin, but none of the warmth from those golden rays penetrated his shell. Nothing touched the cold buried deep inside him. Not even the searing heat from the fires that turned the once again yellowing fields to ash. He watched as men in dark leather and bright red masks came in the darkest part of night to sweep up the supplies from the barns, to set fire to the fields, to leave thin red lines on the throats of the farmers and their families. He watched them slink off into the night and knew that--before--he would have killed them all. He would have prevented this monstrosity, and if he had failed in that, he would have gone after them and killed them all. 

But he was waiting to finish dying. And the only thing he felt as he calmly watched the raid carried out below his uncomfortable seat on the high cliff was why those dark raiders had not bothered to climb the cliff and slit his throat too. 

It was not long after that the child appeared. The ash had still not settled, the last embers of the fire had yet to fade completely, and though the blood had most certainly dried by now, the bodies had yet to begin to decay. The child appeared in increments over the edge of the cliff, first her fingers, then her bony elbows, then the top of her head, her long dark hair matted with her mother’s blood and the ashes of her childhood home. She hauled herself up onto the cliff and paused, looking back down at the burned-out farm below her with tears in her eyes. He watched her calmly, indifferently. She was just a minor distraction, something to pass the time. He did not shift his weight; he did not move. He continued waiting to die. 

The small child caught sight of him and let out a small gasp. She took in his haggard appearance, the result of sitting on a cliff top for a year without moving, and his dead, glowing eyes, and his unsheathed sword lying still and cold across his still, cold knees. She watched him with a tinge of awe, a hint of fear, and a good deal of surprised confusion. 

“Excuse me, sir?” her voice was tiny in the stillness that had followed the destruction of the farm. She approached him carefully, slowly, but in a manner that betrayed deep reservoirs of bravery and an innate trust that he would not use the naked sword in his lap. “Sir, how long you been out here?” 

“Long,” he rumbled in his deep, echoing voice, wincing as the months of disuse caused a rasping made even more rough by the doubling that plagued all the voices of his kind. “But not long enough.”

“What are you doing up here?” the child glanced quickly between him and the edge of the cliff. “Didn’t you see what happened?”

“Perhaps,” he murmured. “But I could do nothing.”

“But aren’t you a hero, mister?” the child asked, eyes wide in her tearstained face, darting between his sword, his heavy armor, the scars that crossed his face and his bare arms. 

“Not anymore,” he replied gravely, looking out over the destruction he had not been able to prevent. That he had not tried to prevent. “Not anymore, child.”

“What are you then, if you aren’t a hero?”

“I am dead, child.”

“But you’re still walkin’ and talkin’.” 

“I am a ghost, forced to haunt my own body.” 

“Oooooh,” she said, as if that explained everything. He supposed it rather did. She paused, tilting her head to the side. “But then, aren’t you still a hero?”

“I am the ghost of one. What can a ghost do against such a force as this?” He swept a hand wide, encompassing the burning remains of the farmland in his gesture. It was the first movement he had made in a year, and his armor creaked. His tendons creaked. Perhaps his body was closer to death than he had thought. The child shrugged. 

“You got a sword, mister. You could go and find them that did it and bring ‘em back fir justice and all that.”

“Is that what a hero would do?” He felt the derision, the disgust creep into his voice—derision at his own lack of will, disgust at his lack of feeling. 

“That’s what I’d do if I were big enough to be a hero,” the child shrugged again. He winced to see such matter-of-factness, such practicality in this child that should still be innocent and full of wonder. He glanced back at the fires and saw the wisps of the child’s wonder curling up in the smoke, burned up like dreams. The child looked up at him. “I’m not big enough, though. You are. Will you find them that killed my mum and make them pay?” 

He looked down, away from that hopeful, tearstained face, and his eyes found the scorched corpse of the woman who had been this child’s mother, lying in the charred remains of her home. He grimaced and closed his eyes, praying for strength. But what would answer the prayers of the dead?

“I can try,” he said heavily. The child rushed forward and hugged his arm, her tiny arms barely encompassing his massive bicep. She could not have been more than eight years old. And her childhood had just burned to ash. He had not realized what emotions he had been missing until he saw them in the face of this child. He knelt and placed his hand on her shoulder. “I was once a hero, that much I remember,” he said softly. “Though I am but the ghost of what I once was, even the ghost of a hero is more useful than a dead one. Even a ghost is better than nothing at all. Perhaps, I can, after all, help you.”

He stood up and hefted his immense sword, laying it across his shoulder with one hand as if it weighed no more than the wind. It ached--his whole body ached. But as he stretched, he shook off a year of immobility, a year of silence, a year of stagnant mind and spirit and body. He raised himself to his full height, and looked at the world through the eyes of this small child, this tiny soul who was not yet big enough to bring justice into her world. He watched the setting sun dry the tears on her face and something inside him woke up and remembered. 

He remembered the light of a thousand thousand sunsets, and the warmth of campfires, hearth fires in the darkness. He remembered the people he had fought for, fought with, fought against, saved. Killed. He remembered the war. That much he knew, but now he remembered what it had felt like, what pain and rage and grief and joy and gratitude and honor had felt like. He remembered dying. And he remembered why he did not want to die. His work was not finished. He still had people to save. This small child still needed justice. 

“Child,” he said gently, kneeling before her, “I must thank you. You have reminded me of my purpose. You have set me on my path, from which I had far wandered and forgotten.”

“You didn’t seem very lost,” she said trying a smile. He smiled back, surprised that he still knew how. 

“My body was here all year, but my soul was quite gone,” he explained. “And I must thank you for bringing it back.”

“So, you’ll help me?” the child asked, hope shining like the sun in her eyes.

“By the Light,” he whispered, “I swear. You, and all those like you unable to find justice themselves. For you, I will bring justice.”

And though he did not realize it, in that moment he became again a hero.

* * *

A/N: I'm not 100% happy with this, but I can't quite put my finger on why not...so up it goes. Because it's the first postable thing I've written in months. Argh. Okay, thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed. 


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